Abstraction in Action Magdalena Fernández: Exhibition Series “CLIMAS” https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/magdalena-fernandez-exhibition-series-climas/

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Artist: Magdalena Fernández

CLIMAS
Opening November 17, 2016
Saludarte Foundation / Ideobox Artspace
Miami, Florida

In the words of Magdalena Fernández: “1i011 (Forest) is a penetrable installation, made of light aluminum rods of various sizes hinged together, which transforms, breaks and become alive when visitors enter it and run through it. It appears, then, as a vibrant, unstable and mobile “Forest”, formed from a metal structure in unstable equilibrium that agitates, shakes and trembles, interacting with the bodies and other elements found in the space it occupies. This webbing of branches takes over the place in which is located, and it is virtually transformed into a vibrant piece of unpredictable changes and movements. Thus, each viewer makes this landscape in a proper place that is constantly redrawing, in a spatial grid with which he interacts and plays, in a jungle of memories where he can circulate reflectively. In short, this “Forest”, this structure in precarious equilibrium, this exploration through our ways of apprehending and experiencing nature, arises as the possibility of a journey of sensations, in which the occurring mutations, due to the exchange between bodies and spatial intervention device, vitalize the geometric rigor of the structure and the coldness of the materials impregnating them with vibrations, reverberations, waves and resonances”.
November 28, 2016 Emilia Azcarate, Magdalena Fernandez, Ximena Garrido-Lecca: MDE 15 Medellín https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/emilia-azcarate-magdalena-fernandez-ximena-garrido-lecca-mde-15-medellin/

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Artists: Adrián Balseca, Adrian Paci, Adriana Escobar, Alexandra McCormick, Allan Sekula and Noël Burch, Amar Kanwar, Ana Patricia Palacios, Annaleen Louwes, Anri Sala, Antonio Caro, Antonio Paucar, Arquitectura Expandida and Caldo de Cultivo, Camila Botero, Camilo Cantor, Camilo Restrepo, Carlos Motta, Clara Ianni and Debora da Silva, Claudio Perna, Colectivo Nomanada, Cráter Invertido, Dan Perjovschi, Daniela Ortiz, Elena Vargas Tisnés, Élkin Calderón Guevara, Emilia Azcárate, Fernando Arias, Giuseppe Campuzano, Gülsün Karamustafa, Halil Altindere, Jordi Colomer, Jorge Alonso Zapata, Jorge Andrés Marín, José Alejandro Restrepo, Juan Javier Salazar, Juan Obando, Libia Posada, Liliana Angulo, Magdalena Fernández, Mapa Teatro, María Buenaventura, Michael Soi, Miguel Ángel Rojas, Mónica Mayer, Mujeres Creando, Myriam Lefkowitz, Natalia Giraldo Giraldo, Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg, Nathaly Rubio, Núria Güell, Paromita Vohra, Phil Collins, Santiago Vélez, Sislej Xhafa, Tercerunquinto, Todo por la Praxis, Tricilab, William Engelen, Wilson Díaz, Ximena Garrido-Lecca, Yoel Díaz Vázquez.

MDE 15 Medellín
Curated by Nydia Gutiérrez, Tony Evanko, Fernando Escobar, Sharon Lerner, Edi Muka.
October 2015 – March 2016
Museo de Antioquia
Medellín, Colombia

The theme of Local Stories/Global Practices has been conceived to create a space of reflection and engagement with the recent transformation of Medellín since the turn of the millennium. Medellín, considered to be a progressive Latin American city that has implemented innovative programs to stimulate social and urban development, is part of a larger picture. While the results of these processes are real and tangible, the dynamics they have generated are particularly complex from an ethical standpoint. In order to understand their implications we propose to focus on these processes of change and explore them through commissioned projects, works of artists and other socially oriented initiatives, sometimes inserted in spaces beyond the artistic field.

MDE15 inserts itself in the social fabric of the city while sharing stories, experiences and practices from elsewhere in the world. Transformative changes can elicit psychological, physical and social responses that range from issues of trust and security to economic well-being. The stories that result from observations and from the direct experiences of people in communities, often address the coping mechanisms that are required to survive and flourish amid those changes, which often occur at a pace that outstrips the citizens and society’s ability to assimilate them. MDE15 aims at focusing on the unsaid and the less visible aspects of the everyday, such as memory, the past, the persistence of structural problems, but also the resilience of life in the city. It also relies on the potential of art to harness the capacity of individual and collective imagination to re-signify complex situations.

It is in this context and in the context of a critical standpoint in which the definition of artistic practice is constantly being challenged, that the MDE15 unfolds.

Topics

  1. Violence, conflict and memory
  2. Local stories in a global context
  3. Exertion of power over the body
  4. The institutional teasing
  5. Resilient city: dreams, desires and possibilities
January 29, 2016 Monochrome Undone https://abstractioninaction.com/projects/monochrome-undone/

Monochrome Undone
SPACE Collection

Curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill
October 24, 2015 – April 1, 2016
SPACE, Irvine, CA

Artists: Ricardo Alcaide, Alejandra Barreda, Andrés Bedoya*, Emilio Chapela, Eduardo Costa, Danilo Dueñas, Magdalena Fernández, Valentina Liernur, Marco Maggi, Manuel Mérida, Gabriel de la Mora, Miguel Angel Ríos, Lester Rodríguez, Eduardo Santiere, Emilia Azcárate, Marta Chilindrón, Bruno Dubner, Rubén Ortíz-Torres, Fidel Sclavo, Renata Tassinari, Georgina Bringas, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Thomas Glassford, José Luis Landet, Jorge de León, Bernardo Ortiz, Martin Pelenur, Teresa Pereda, Pablo Rasgado, Ricardo Rendón, Santiago Reyes Villaveces, Mariela Scafati, Gabriel Sierra, Jaime Tarazona, Adán Vallecillo, Horacio Zabala.

The monochrome as a focus in the SPACE Collection began in a spontaneous form and soon became a systematic field of research. This exhibition is about the contemporary monochrome in Latin America. The monochrome is one of the most elusive and complex art forms of modern and contemporary art. If we think about its origins or meaning, we find that the monochrome is many contradictory things. The monochrome is neither a movement nor a category; it is not an “ism” or a thing. It may be painting as object, the material surface of the work itself, the denial of perspective or narrative, or anything representational. The monochrome may be a readymade, a found object, or an environment—anything in which a single color dominates. The monochrome can be critical and unstable, especially when it dialogues critically or in tension with modernism. This exhibition is organized into four different themes: The Everyday Monochrome, The White Monochrome, The Elusive Monochrome and The Transparent Monochrome. These themes have been conceived to create context and suggest interpretations that otherwise might be illegible.  These may overlap at times, pointing to the multiplicity of content in many of the works. The unclassifiable and variable nature of the monochrome in Latin America today is borne of self-criticality and from unique Latin contexts, to exist within its own specificity and conceptual urgency.

To purchase the catalogue click here.

El monocromo, como enfoque de SPACE Collection, comenzó de forma espontánea y a poco se convirtió en un campo de investigación sistemático. Esta exposición trata sobre el monocromo contemporáneo en América latina. El monocromo es una de las formas de arte más elusivas y complejas del arte moderno y contemporáneo. Si reflexionamos acerca de sus orígenes o su significado, nos encontramos con que puede albergar muchas cosas contradictorias. El monocromo no es un movimiento ni una categoría; no es un “ismo” ni una cosa. Puede ser la pintura como objeto, la superficie material de la obra, la negación de la perspectiva o de todo lo representativo o narrativo. El monocromo puede ser un readymade, un objeto encontrado, un cuadro o un ambiente: cualquier cosa definida como una superficie cromáticamente uniforme donde un solo color predomina. El monocromo puede ser crítico e inestable, especialmente cuando se dialoga críticamente o en tensión con el modernismo. Esta exposición está organizada en cuatro temas: el monocromo cotidiano, el monocromo blanco, el monocromo elusivo y el monocromo transparente. Estos temas han sido concebidos a fin de crear un contexto y sugerir interpretaciones que de otra manera podrían ser ilegibles. Éstos pueden superponerse a veces, apuntando a la multiplicidad de contenidos en muchas de las obras. La naturaleza indeterminada, inclasificable y variable del monocromo en Latinoamérica hoy en día es producto de la autocrítica y de los contextos propios, para existir dentro de su propia especificidad y urgencia conceptual.

Para comprae el libro haz clic aquí.

September 25, 2015 Magdalena Fernández: Solo show https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/magdalena-fernandez-solo-show/

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Artist: Magdalena Fernández

Magdalena Fernández
Curated by Alma Ruiz
October 3, 2015 – January 3, 2016
MOCA Pacific Design Center
West Hollywood, CA, USA

Magdalena Fernández is the first major museum exhibition of the artist’s work presented in the United States. Organized by Alma Ruiz, Magdalena Fernández features six videos and one site-specific installation at MOCA Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood. A well-known and influential Venezuelan artist, Fernández has built her practice upon the foundation of Latin American modernist abstraction that took root in her native country at the beginning of the 20th century. Fernández’s multidisciplinary work incorporates light, movement, and sound, following traditions established by renowned compatriot artists Gego (1912-94), Alejandro Otero (1921-90), and Jesús Rafael Soto (1923-2005). Fernández’s artistic practice is deeply connected to the natural world, especially the tropical fauna and flora of Caracas, as well as to formal modernist sensibilities. Her extensive background in graphic design—acquired as a student at the Instituto de Diseño Fundación Neumann, and later as a designer in the studio of minimalist Italian architect-designer A.G. Fronzoni (1923-2002)—has greatly influenced the visual, sensorial, and experiential aspects that distinguish her work.

The artist has stood out as one of the most innovating artist of contemporary geometric abstraction. Her multidisciplinary work conjugates light, sound and contemporary criteria of space and use of materials, with some formal concepts of the traditional legacy of optical and geometrical abstraction. Fernández’s video-artistic practice explores the possible relations between abstraction and nature. In her work, the artist proposes a dialogue of visual and sensorial perceptions with space, transforming geometry and abstraction into nature for the senses.

Image: Magdalena Fernández, 1pmS011, 2011, video installation, dimensions variable, photo by Ricardo Jiménez, courtesy of Centro Cultural Chacao and the artist. Sayago & Pardon Collection.
September 22, 2015 Danilo Dueñas, Magdalena Fernández, Jaime Gili, Osvaldo Romberg, Gabriel Sierra, Adán Vallecillo: Impulse, Reason, Sense, Conflict https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/danilo-duenas-magdalena-fernandez-jaime-gili-osvaldo-romberg-gabriel-sierra-adan-vallecillo-impulse-reason-sense-conflict/

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Artists: Aitken, Francis Alÿs, Miguel Amat, Stanley Brouwn, James Brown, Ryan Brown, Carlos Bunga, Daniel Buren, Sergio Camargo, Mario Carreño, Natalia Castañeda, Carla Chaim, Lygia Clark, Dadamaino, Sandu Darié, Willys De Castro, Iran do, Leonardo Drew, Danilo Dueñas, Eugenio Espinoza, Qin Feng, José Gabriel Fernández, Magdalena Fernández, Fernanda Fragateiro, Mario Garcia Torres, Theaster Gates, Gego, Gunther Gerszo, Jaime Gili, Fernanda Gomes, Alberto Greco, Sara Grilo, Arturo Herrera, Karl Hugo Schmolz, Alfred Jensen, Donald Judd, William Kentridge, Jannis Kounellis, Liz Larner, Jac Leirner, Sol Lewitt, Guido Llinas, Anna Maria Maiolino, Raul Martinez, Sarah Morris, Helio Oiticica, Gabriel Orozco, Alejandro Otero, Claudio Perna, Liliana Porter, Carlos Puche, Eduardo Ramirez Villamizar, Dorothea Rockburne, Carlos Rojas, Osvaldo Romberg, Ana Sacerdote, Espirito Santo, Mira Schendel, Harald Schmitz Schmelzer, Gunter Schroeder, Gabriel Sierra, Lolo Soldevilla, Jesús Soto, Eduardo Terrazas, Erwin Thorn, Fred Tomaselli, Richard Tuttle, Adan Vallecillo, Adrián Villar Rojas, Alfred Wenemoser, Pae White.

Impulse, Reason, Sense, Conflict -Abstract Art from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection
December 3, 2014 – March 8, 2015
CIFO Art Space
Miami, FL, USA

The exhibition includes 105 pieces by 72 artists from different generations and latitudes, who share their interpretations and philosophies of abstraction. The exhibition was organized by CIFO.

Impulse, Reason, Sense, Conflict explores abstraction as an aesthetic category instead of as a movement or art trend.  Since its inception abstraction has provided a series of models that remain paradigmatic and exemplary  in today’s art production. The exhibition is divided in four areas:

Abstract Impulses dedicated to the rupture with mimetic representation and its concomitant representational crisis with the subsequence substitution of the represented object by the structural elements of painting itself (color, line, etc.) On this section the artists represented will include Mario Garcia Torres, Theaster Gates, Andreas Gursky, Anna Maria Maiolino, Sarah Morris, Reinhard Mucha, Helio Oiticica, Liliana Porter, Karl Hugo Schmolz, Fred Tomaselli, Adrián Villar Rojas, and Pae White among others.

Laboratory of Reason refers to the questioning of the nature, essence and even the existence of art implied in abstration. Instead of asking “what is beauty?,” this section questions art’s existence to the extreme of declaring it dead. Artists included on this section are Doug  Aitken, Lygia Clark, Dadamaino, Olafur Eliasson, Fernanda Fragateiro, Fernanda Gomes, Arturo Herrera, Donald Judd, William Kentridge, Liz Larner, Jac Leirner, Gabriel Orozco, Osvaldo Romberg, Gabriel  Sierra, and Alfred Wenemoser among others.

Uncommon Senses relates to the integration and crossover of other art forms. With the introduction of different materials, media and art forms such as theater, music, dance and literature, abstraction demanded an approach that required the use of multiple senses, both from its makers but also art’s viewers. Francis Alÿs, Stanley Brouwn, Sergio Camargo, Willys De Castro, Qin Feng, Gego, Alberto Greco, Jannis Kounellis, Sol Lewitt, Dorothea Rockburne, Mira Schendel, Erwin Thorn, and Richard Tuttle are some of the artists in this section.

Spatial Conflicts touches on abstraction as a radical change in the conception of spatiality that substituted the Rennaisance perspectival notion of space. Abstract art promotes a real experience. In this section, we showcase Antonio Asis, Carlos Bunga, Daniel Buren, Mario Carreño, Iran do, Espirito Santo, Eugenio Espinoza, Sarah Grilo, Gunther Gerszo, Alfred Jensen, Alejandro Otero, Jesús Soto, Eduardo Terrazas, and Erwin Thorn among others.

Image: Miguel Amat, Series: Capitalismo y Vanguardia, 2006-2010. Photo by Oriol Tarridas.
December 1, 2014 Marta Chilindrón, Magdalena Fernández & Jaime Tarazona: Degrees of Separation https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marta-chilindron-magdalena-fernandez-jaime-tarazona-degrees-separation/

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Artists: Marta Chilindrón, Magdalena Fernández, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Caio Fonseca, Julio Le Parc, Cipriano Martínez, Daniel Medina, Abraham Paltnik, Rafael Reveron-Pojan, Jesús Rafael Soto, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, and Jaime Tarazona.

Degrees of Separation
June 27 – September 14, 2014
Maddox Arts
London, UK

Curated by Mario Palencia and Laura Culpan, this exhibition looks specifically at the legacy of the Modern Masters born in the 1920s who were pioneering geometric abstraction and kinetic art across Latin America in the 1950s and 60s and how the younger generation is carrying this aesthetic on, in their own contemporary way.

 

September 9, 2014 Alexander Apóstol, Magdalena Fernández, Patrick Hamilton & Ishmael Randall-Weeks: Beyond the Supersquare https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/alexander-apostol-magdalena-fernandez-patrick-hamilton-ishmael-randall-weeks-beyond-supersquare/

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Artists: Leonor Antunes, Alexander Apóstol, Alexandre Arrecha, Felipe Arturo, Alessandro Balteo Yazbek, Alberto Baraya, Carlos Bunga, Los Carpinteros, Jordi Colomer, Livia Corona, Felipe Dulzaides, Magdalena Fernández, Fernanda Fragateiro, Carlos Garaicoa, Mario García Torres, Terence Gower, Patrick Hamilton, Quisqueya Henríquez, Diango Hernández, Andre Komatsu, Runo Lagomarsino, Pablo León de la Barra, Maria Martínez-Cañas, Daniela Ortiz, Jorge Pardo, Manuel Piña, Ishmael Randall-Weeks, Mauro Restiffe, Pedro Reyes and Chemi Rosado-Seijo.

Beyond the Supersquare: On Modernism
May 1, 2014 – January 11, 2015
Bronx Museum
Bronx, NY, USA

The indelible influence of Latin American and Caribbean modernist architecture on contemporary artists will be explored by The Bronx Museum of the Arts in the exhibition Beyond the Supersquare, on view May 1, 2014 through January 11, 2015. The exhibition features 30 artists and more than 60 artworks—including photography, video, sculpture, installation, and drawing—that respond to major Modernist architectural projects constructed in Latin America and the Caribbean from the 1920s through the 1960s. Beyond the Supersquare examines the complicated legacies of Modernist architecture and thought—as embodied by the political, economic, environmental, and social challenges faced by countries throughout Latin America—through the unique perspective of artists working today.

The exhibition represents the culmination of a four-year research initiative at the Bronx Museum spearheaded by Executive Director Holly Block and Independent Curator María Inés Rodriguez. Many of the exhibition themes have grown out of a three-day conference held at the Bronx Museum in October 2011, during which artists, architects, urban planners, and scholars convened to discuss the enduring impact of Modernist architecture and ideas in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Beyond the Supersquare explores how contemporary artists from Latin America, the Caribbean, and other regions have responded to the aggressive rise of Latin America’s urban centers and the ways in which those urban areas have evolved since the mid-20th century. Also examined is the social critique of political, social, economic, and environmental issues in Latin America and the Caribbean, including unstable economies, ad hoc urbanism, militarized police forces, and rapidly exhausting natural resources. Exhibition designer Benedeta Monteverde of Mexico City has worked closely with the two curators to generate the exhibit plan for the galleries at the Bronx Museum.

Beyond the Supersquare will be accompanied by a volume, co-published by The Bronx Museum of the Arts and Fordham University Press, featuring original scholarship by noted Latin American architects, historians, and curators. Beyond the Supersquare: Art & Architecture after Modernism in Latin America will include material presented at the Museum’s 2011 Beyond the Supersquare conference led by Ms. Block and Ms. Rodríguez. The advisors for the conference were Carlos Brillembourg (Carlos Brillembourg Architects), Felipe Correa (Somatic Collaborative and Harvard Graduate School of Design), Ana Maria Duran (Estudio A0), Belmont Freeman (Belmont Freeman Architects), Jose Lira (University of Sao Paulo), Ligia Nobre (Independent Curator), and Pedro Reyes (Artist).

The volume will also include an image-rich folio highlighting artworks from the exhibition. Drawing from architectural projects of the 1940s to the 1960s, as well as from socially engaged artistic practices of the present day, the anthology will examine the consequences of the heroic and utopian ideals popular in architectural discourse during the Modernist era, which are evident in the vastly uneven economic conditions and socially disparate societies found throughout the region today

April 24, 2014 Magdalena Fernández https://abstractioninaction.com/artists/magdalena-fernandez/
Translated from Spanish

A look to the past has allowed me to confirm that, intuitively, instability has been a common thread in my research; though it would seem not to be present in all the works I have produced, it always appears in different ways. There are pieces in which I work with a structural instability in it, which is caused by the various possibilities offered by the connections and the links, allowing to change the work into potential forms that are prepared for a possible transformation. In other works instability is more subtle, made through the visibility of the material, for example, through the light that can make a work invisible in front of the spectator. In the last decade, with video, I have been able to introduce sound as a breaking element. Video has also given me the possibility to work with temporary nature. I believe instability refers to movement, break, or something that is ready for a possible transformation. When I work, I do so from “being with” and not from “going to.” I believe this has eliminated projection to the future and has turned the work more timeless, losing with this some historicity, and causing that the work would not be another place in a line. This “being with” is what opens the door to the world, to nature, and allows me, suddenly, to imagine a Mondrian in motion when I see a macaw or I listen to the rain.

 

Una mirada hacia atrás me ha permitido constatar que, intuitivamente, la inestabilidad ha sido un hilo conductor de mi investigación; a pesar de que pareciera no estar presente en la totalidad de las piezas que he hecho, siempre aparece de distintas maneras: hay obras en las que trabajo con una inestabilidad estructural propiamente dicha, la cual está dada por las distintas posibilidades que ofrecen las conexiones, los vínculos, y que logran convertir las obras en formas potenciales que se presentan dispuestas a una posible transformación; en otras obras la inestabilidad es elaborada más sutilmente, a través de la visibilidad del material; por ejemplo, gracias a la luz que puede hasta hacer desaparecer una pieza ante el observador; y en la última década,  con el  video, he podido introducir el sonido como elemento de quiebre. El video me ha dado, además, la posibilidad de trabajar la temporalidad. Creo que la inestabilidad habla del movimiento, del quiebre o de algo que está listo para una posible transformación. Cuando trabajo lo hago desde un “estar con”, y no de  “ir hacia”, siento que eso ha restado la orientación a futuro y ha vuelto el trabajo más atemporal; perdiendo con esto algo de historicidad, haciendo que el trabajo no sea únicamente  un lugar más en una línea. Ese “estar con” es el que abre la puerta al mundo, a la naturaleza;  y me permite, de pronto, imaginarme un Mondrian en movimiento cuando veo una guacamaya o escucho la lluvia.

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November 5, 2013